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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503656">can you teach me how to dance real slow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanceypants/pseuds/vanceypants'>vanceypants</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate History, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Vietnam, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, War, combat bot squip, vaguely hippieish jeremy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:13:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503656</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanceypants/pseuds/vanceypants</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the morning, Squip will be deployed for his third combat mission.  But for tonight, he'll figure out how to be alive with Jeremy.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jeremy Heere/Jeremy Heere's Squip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>can you teach me how to dance real slow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In two weeks, he’d be dead.</p>
<p>Dead wasn’t quite the right word for it.  Destroyed was closer.  Damaged beyond repair.  Blinking aimlessly, limbs blown from his frame, wires crackling and exposed with the last surges of electricity trying to keep him from complete meltdown.  It would hurt, which would surprise him in those last moments.  It would hurt so badly.</p>
<p>They’d retrieve his remains, shut him down, and carry his body back to base to be shipped back home. </p>
<p>Not for a funeral, but to be broken down for scrap.  He would reemerge as a tank or a bomber jet.  Something to cause destruction more efficiently than he’d ever been capable of as a sentient being.</p>
<p>In two weeks, he’d be dead.</p>
<p>But it’s fourteen days before he’ll die.  And he’s sitting on the shag carpeting of Jeremy’s bedroom, in his crappy little apartment, running his fingertips over every strand, undoing the flattened areas where feet had fallen.  The record player runs through the grooves of a song that has Jeremy on his feet, hips swaying, hand outstretched.</p>
<p>“D...dance with me, Squip.”</p>
<p>He speaks Squip’s name as though it’s a name at all, which he supposed was a redundant way to think about it.  But it wasn’t a name, not in a true sense, but rather a title.  A model classification.  A status as a weapon, humanized though his exterior might be.  </p>
<p>He’d been deployed two times already, and the third looms over them now.  He hadn’t known Jeremy for the other two missions.  He supposes this is what makes the third so different.</p>
<p>Someone to come home to.</p>
<p>Someone to be his home.</p>
<p>Someone who might remember him if anything were to happen.</p>
<p>“I can’t,” Squip says.  His hands clutch at the carpet, and his eyes move away from Jeremy’s fingertips, pretty and soft and tinted with flecks of paint from helping with the protester’s signs earlier in the afternoon.</p>
<p>He’d felt silly, sitting around with Jeremy’s friends, as they came up with mottos and slogans, as they spoke of revolution and change.  He’d felt like an enemy, a tool of a crooked government soon to be sent out for more acts of terror and desecration to people who hadn’t the means to defend themselves properly.</p>
<p>Squip didn’t think he hated himself.  But he didn’t think he particularly liked himself either.</p>
<p>He couldn’t understand why Jeremy cared for him at all.</p>
<p>His hand remains outstretched.  And Squip blinks up at him finally, frown tugging at his lips.  “I can’t,” He repeats, as Jeremy’s hand changes directions, no longer waiting to be grabbed, but rather moving through the synthetic strands of the robot’s hair.</p>
<p>“You could,” Jeremy counters.  “If you...y-you really wanted to.”</p>
<p>“I’m not programmed for that.” His arms cross over his shirt, something purchased by Jeremy-</p>
<p>Well.</p>
<p>Something stolen by Jeremy, to replace the singular green uniform he had by means of clothing prior to that.  </p>
<p>Jeremy had done so much to try to personify him.  The least Squip could do was honor his gifts by humoring him with little trickles of humanity.</p>
<p>“What makes you think I want to?”</p>
<p>Jeremy bites his lip for just a moment, a sign of the insecurity that he always tried to assure everyone (through words, through action, through posture) was long buried.  Squip knows better.  He thinks he might understand Jeremy better than he’s ever understood himself.  Jeremy, soft and artistic and passionate and kind.  Jeremy, optimistic and idealistic and unorthodoxly charismatic.  Jeremy was a lamp who didn’t realize he lit up every room he entered.</p>
<p>At least, he lit up Squip’s miniscule universe.</p>
<p>They’d known each other all of a month.  30 days.</p>
<p>In fourteen more, Squip would be dead.</p>
<p>But right now, Jeremy wants him to dance.  To dance, in his ridiculous tie-dye and bell bottoms.  Squip feels a tickle against his temple, and remembers the flower Jeremy had tucked behind his ear.</p>
<p>Completely preposterous.</p>
<p>But he leaves it, even as he stands.</p>
<p>“I don’t care for this song.”</p>
<p>“I-I don’t care for you,” Jeremy teases, his hands gravitating to Squip’s hips.  They rest against him, and make him aware of the metal elements that lay just beneath the artificially soft silicone-based skin and the roughness of his jeans.  He’s so heavy and graceless, though his frame itself is so visually lithe.  He knows the truth of his design, of his nature, even if Jeremy’s hands don’t hold him with the same knowledge.</p>
<p>“You don’t mean that.”</p>
<p>“Well, no,” Jeremy concedes.  “But, uh, but your attitude is awful.”</p>
<p>“And what of yours?”</p>
<p>“You’re s-so formal.  You, uh, you know you can just r-relax around me.  Be yourself.”</p>
<p>Squip’s still finding who that might be.  He thinks whoever that is though, whoever his “self” ended up being, unveiled piece by piece through songs and clothes and art and affection and the human condition, he might like to meet him.  He might like to become him.</p>
<p>He might like it, this whole messy affair of existence.</p>
<p>“I am.”</p>
<p>Jeremy teeters on his toes.  His lips caress Squip’s, and he tastes of SweetTarts and citrus sodapop.  Squip lets his lips part, as Jeremy’s hand releases his hip, to tangle into his hair.  </p>
<p>The kiss is as brilliant as it is short lived.  Jeremy gasps for breath and smiles up at him, fingers still in his hair.</p>
<p>“I’m s-surprised they didn’t buzz it.”</p>
<p>“They did,” Squip admits, and he wants to get back to kissing instead of discussing his physical attributes.  “I, ah, I paid to-”</p>
<p>“Have extensions put in?”</p>
<p>It’s not that Squip’s hair is particularly long, but its black strands are certainly not Army-issued.  He knows they’ll be sheared down again, and he tells himself it doesn’t bother him.</p>
<p>He tells himself he can always go to the same technician once he’s home again, perhaps even before seeking out Jeremy’s company again, and return to his newly discovered preferences.</p>
<p>“Something like that.”</p>
<p>“That’s s-so cute.” Jeremy scratches his fingers against Squip’s scalp, and he tries not to mewl in pleasure.  Every wire under the surface seems to spark at once, a wonderful jolt that he wants to bask in.  The electricity only glows hotter in their moments of intimacy.</p>
<p>He hopes they’ll engage in that once more before he’s shuffled onto the bus to base in the morning.  Just one more moment.  And then they could hold each other after.  He could fold himself up tiny and feel what it’s like to be small and vulnerable and desired and protected.</p>
<p>“You’re still not dancing with me.”</p>
<p>“I still don’t want to.”</p>
<p>Jeremy pulls away, and Squip watches him uneasily.  He doesn’t want him to be away from him.  He isn’t ready to disengage.</p>
<p>He’s going to need to redirect his feelings with every mile that spans between them, starting in the morning.  He’s going to need to realign his interests towards the protection of his fellow troops, in following orders, in being a good unit, a good weapon.</p>
<p>He’s going to have to ignore the ocean as they fly overseas, and how the blue will make him think of Jeremy’s eyes.</p>
<p>His kind had been built for this.  Invented only two decades prior, fortified and perfected at the beginning of this cursed war.  SQUIPs were only one of the combat androids crafted for terrainial combat, but likely the most efficient of those available for military utilization.</p>
<p>Anything to help cut down the numbers of innocent men drafted.  No one could mourn a machine.</p>
<p>Jeremy had pointed out once how propaganda was designed to dehumanize the enemy.  Squip had countered that with the increase in production of units like himself, soon even the homeland would be quite literally dehumanized as well.</p>
<p>
  <i>“Y-you’re human to me, Squip.” Jeremy had insisted.</i>
</p>
<p>It had been a strange conversation.  And Squip wasn’t sure he wanted to be human, but he certainly didn’t want to be a thing.</p>
<p>But wanting was counterproductive to immersing himself in his primary objective.</p>
<p>The record scratches out of the faster rhythms, into something slower, sweeter.  Jeremy pulls away from the needle, swiveling to face Squip again, a softer smile on his face.</p>
<p>“Dance with m-me,” His stutter is soft and kind and his hands reach out.</p>
<p>This time, Squip takes them.</p>
<p>His hands are built to kill, but Jeremy holds them with the same delicacy that he used to pluck the flower currently tucked behind Squip’s ear.  He brings him in close, tight, their bodies meshed together.  Jeremy rests his cheek against Squip’s shoulder, releasing his hands to softly loop his arms around Squip’s torso.</p>
<p>Squip places his own hands against Jeremy’s hips.  </p>
<p>It’s more swaying than dancing.  Squip squeezes Jeremy’s hips, and feels the warmth of him underneath his touch.  Jeremy nuzzles against him, and turns his face to kiss the junction between Squip’s neck and shoulder.</p>
<p>“J-just stay,” He murmurs.  “We can, um, we can go to C-Canada or, um, or something.  Me and you.”</p>
<p>Squip slides his hands around, resting against Jeremy’s lower back.  He closes his eyes, and imagines the snow.  He imagines the snow and the glowing pink of Jeremy’s nose in the cold, and he imagines what it must feel like to have one’s pulse jump in pure bliss.</p>
<p>“I can’t.  I belong to-”</p>
<p>“You belong to y-yourself.”</p>
<p>“And to you?”</p>
<p>Jeremy pulls his head upward, eyes locking with Squip’s, as he shakes his head briefly.  “N-no.  Not even me.  Yourself.  You’re a p-person, Squip.  You deserve to...you deserve so much better than th-this.  Stay.  Stay with me.  Please don’t go.”</p>
<p>Squip needs to refute him.  But the words clamor within his voice transmitter, and he stifles them, one hand moving to the back of Jeremy’s head, directing him back against his shoulder, then petting each curl.  “Dance with me,” He says.  For now, that’ll be enough.</p>
<p>In two weeks, he’ll be dead.</p>
<p>But for right now, he’s never felt more alive.</p>
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